Disney Closes LucasArts Written Wednesday, April 03, 2013 By Lee Bradley View author's profile

Disney is closing LucasArts as a games developer and publisher. Instead the company will now operate solely as a licensee of the Star Wars name to external developers. 

The move will leave hundreds of games developers out of a job.

"After evaluating our position in the games market, we've decided to shift LucasArts from an internal development to a licensing model, minimizing the company's risk while achieving a broader portfolio of quality Star Wars games,” reads a statement.

“As a result of this change, we've had layoffs across the organization. We are incredibly appreciative and proud of the talented teams who have been developing our new titles."

LucasArts was acquired by Disney in late 2012, as part of a deal worth $4.05 billion. At the time CEO Robert Iger said, "We're likely to focus more on social and mobile than we are on console," leading to fears that Star Wars 1313, LucasArts’ “mature” oriented title may be scrapped.

Now it seems that not only will we never see Star Wars 1313, we’ll never see an internally-developed title from LucasArts ever again.

LucasArts is responsible for some of the most charished games in the history of the medium, starting with its classic adventure games of the late 80s and early 90s, including Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island. In later years the company focused increasingly on producing Star Wars titles, to varying degrees of success.

This story will no doubt run for some time. In the meantime, best of luck to all those that have lost their jobs.

[via Game Informer]

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